Chapter 4
I made it back to my shop swiftly, stopping before the door to fumble for the keys in my pocket. As I picked through loose buttons and pieces of lint, voices drifted from behind the building; one sounded very familiar.
“I don’t know how else to continue. My property can only handle so much!” Mrs. Lewis said in her squawking voice.
Someone shushed her, a harsh sound that cut through the silence of the street. “Be quiet,” an oily male voice said. “Continue you must, if you want the funds.”
I stilled. Funds? For all I knew, Mrs. Lewis got her money from two places—my rent, and her daughter’s generosity, the latter of which she never failed to boast about.
Who was this mysterious man? I was half-tempted to round the building and take a look, but the white of my blouse was far too conspicuous against the dark alleyway and grimy bricks.
“But I—”
“You are not essential to the crown. You will be removed if you do not cooperate.”
Mrs. Lewis huffed. “Prilla is one of your best, how could you treat me so?”
The man huffed. “The merits of your daughter have nothing to do with you. Now get back inside and continue to do what you promised.”
I unlocked my shop door at last and entered, the bell ringing gently behind me.
What did the man mean, that Mrs. Lewis wasn’t essential to the crown?
That fact seemed rather obvious. And what did her daughter have to do with any of it?
I shook my head. Whatever suspicious dealings Mrs. Lewis was up to was certainly none of my business.
I focused on the matter at hand: I needed white silk thread.
Rummaging through the drawers in the back room, then the fitting room, and removing nearly half the items in my bag yielded no sightings of another spool.
Money was tight and silk thread was expensive. A great deal would be required for Narcissa’s gown.
I set my hands on my hips and looked up at the mildewy ceiling of the fitting room, dark spots already blooming over the coat of paint that had been hastily applied the month my lease began. I could’ve sworn there was the husk of a meaty insect trapped beneath the dried paint.
Beyond that, on the second floor, was a treasure trove of Mrs. Lewis’s old millinery supplies.
Felted wools and spools of thread, silk flowers and stuffed birds, all swathed in dusty tarps.
I had only ever caught glimpses and never dared to linger—only long enough to relieve myself, as the lavatory was also situated there.
But perhaps while Mrs. Lewis was busy outside. ..
I startled at the sound of someone bursting through the front entrance. Sharp footsteps dulled by my rug thumped closer until Mrs. Lewis tossed back the gauzy curtains to the fitting room.
She gasped, as if I had been the one to barge in on her.
“Witch girl! How long have you been here?” she demanded. Her wiry gray hair was mussed and she was dressed in a ratty gray pinafore and her house slippers, which left her bony ankles on display. Certainly not appropriate attire for a rendezvous.
“I just got back,” I said slowly, making a show of tucking my key back into my pocket.
“I want a bath. Draw the water and heat it up,” she said. “And no magic. If I catch a whiff of witchcraft, you’re done here.”
The threat sounded almost half-hearted.
“You ought to call your daughter for that,” I said.
Mrs. Lewis always talked about her daughter Prilla as if the woman were a blessing upon the earth.
I didn’t know much about her, other than she was a working woman who traveled a great deal.
“I don’t think my delicate seamstress hands can take any more of this. ”
“My daughter is not in the city, and I bemoan that fact every day,” Mrs. Lewis shot back. “She’d do a far better job at caring for me than you, that’s for certain.”
She yanked open the door to the stairway and ascended the steps before I could argue that caring for her was not my job at all.
When my lease began, Mrs. Lewis claimed her back and legs were far too frail to draw baths herself.
I had assisted her then out of pity for the old woman, but as the months passed, her spine had miraculously gone from meekly hunched to pillar straight.
She stopped asking for favors and instead began to demand them.
Then, the eviction threats came when I didn’t do her bidding.
I should have known my landlady wasn’t just a poor old woman.
Gossip along the street said that Mrs. Lewis evicted her previous tenant for having his shirt untucked one too many times and gave him two slaps across the face when he couldn’t pay rent.
Conjecture, perhaps, but not too hard to believe.
Now, rumors also had it that she was renting to a terrifying witch who kept the landlady locked in a room and tortured her.
If only they knew I was the one being tortured.
Heaving a sigh, I grabbed the tin pails used for filling the bath and pumped them full of cold water outside, then brought them in to hang over the fireplace.
While the water heated, I tucked my legs beneath me, mended Maddox’s hideous brown waistcoat, and drummed my fingers on the mantle when there was nothing left to do.
My stomach growled. It was well past lunch time, yet my repast had to wait.
When the water was ready, I took the heated pails and hiked up the creaking wooden stairs to the second floor.
A bit of water spilled with every step I took, my skirts growing damp and my palms throbbing from the thin handles digging into my flesh.
Levitation would’ve made the job easy, but I wasn’t going to risk floating pails when Mrs. Lewis could appear in the stairway at any moment.
The stairway itself was dimly lit by miniscule windows at every floor, the grime encrusting the glass barely letting in any light. Curious, I peered through a window to the back of the building, where I’d heard Mrs. Lewis’s exchange. The alleyway was empty now; not even a shadow of a man lingered.
Above me, the sounds of Mrs. Lewis performing her evening ablutions leaked through the ceiling: a hacking cough; a long bout of wheezing; then finally, the twang of phlegm hitting a tin cup.
She retired ridiculously early, only a couple hours after noon, complaining about the aches and pains of old age.
Inevitably, she’d always wake up later in the evening and make a ruckus sorting through dusty piles of junk and furniture on the second floor.
I made a face when I made it to the third floor—Mrs. Lewis’s territory.
The glimpses I caught of her private chambers told me she had a narrow bed, a washstand, and a small copper bathtub riddled with dents.
There was a back window where she let her dirty bathwater dribble down the side of the building and onto the unsuspecting heads of passersby in the alleyway below.
I was unlucky enough to be one of them a couple weeks ago, hence the dirty-bathwater-repelling charm on my belt.
The door was cracked open today. I caught a peek of a bright red rug that wasn’t there before. It looked rather lush, with gold fringes framing the edges. Since when could Mrs. Lewis afford such luxuries? She’d always been a miserly penny pincher.
A gnarled foot sank into it as she shuffled across the room.
Shuddering, I set the pails in front of her door, knocked once, and flew down the staircase before I lost my appetite and she found something else to complain about.
***
MOMENTS LATER, WHEN all was silent save for the splashing of water, I crept back up the stairs to the second floor.
Sneaking up here never failed to make me feel like a child in the village candy shop—one, because I was told explicitly not to venture there, and two, there were tempting confections of all kinds.
There was just enough light streaming in through the small, filthy window to illuminate the contents of the millinery room.
Twisted velvet ribbons as black as licorice sat in glass cases; paste gems sparkled with a hard-candy sheen; feathers as light as spun sugar lined the wooden compartments.
My eye caught on the prize I sought. Across the room in an open cupboard sat rows upon rows of thread in every shade, from the jewel tones of fruit jellies to cotton candy pastels.
To my right, a wooden work table was pushed up against the wall. Felted wool piled around wooden head blocks, upon which hats and bonnets of every shape and color sat. I admired the elegance of the designs and the artful arrangement of silk flowers upon the curved brims.
Mrs. Lewis had once been a rather accomplished milliner, if her older pieces indicated anything. Sadly, old age and ill humor left her with cloudy eyes and shaking hands. The loss of her craft was the only thing about the dreadful old crone I could sympathize with.
She had kept all the remnants of her past life on the second floor of her building. Leaving such a fine hoard to collect dust was a wrong that needed to be righted.
I glanced over my shoulder at the narrow staircase.
No creaks sounded from the floor above, a telltale sign that Mrs. Lewis hadn’t moved from her bath.
A grin tugged at my lips as I stepped onto a stool, coming eye-to-eye with her fantastic collection of thread.
My eyes trailed hungrily over emerald greens and periwinkle blues, all shining with a faint luster.
I was tempted to pocket entire spools at once, but I focused on what I needed at hand.
Some white thread to baste together Narcissa’s wedding gown.
And perhaps a few yards of bleached linen thread for Maddox’s shirts, something I hadn’t had the funds to repurchase ever since Mrs. Lewis increased rent last month, claiming that she deserved a cut from my shop’s nonexistent profits.
With utmost precision, I nudged the ends of the threads with my magic to wind around my fingers.
The spools spun silently on their wooden pins.
The skeins on my fingers grew thicker until I deemed them enough for what I needed.
Carefully, I snipped them free with a pair of embroidery scissors on the counter.
My magic hummed, coursing through my blood in a delightful, heady tingle as I tucked the skeins of thread into my pocket. It had been dormant for far too long, save for when I was sewing. I had used more of it when I joined the Witch Committee.
Though, I thought darkly, perhaps it is better to leave some parts unused.